After last night’s loss to the Devils, David Quinn shook up the lines at practice. The big change is that Tony DeAngelo is back in the lineup, and that was expected. He was being disciplined internally on Saturday, but the Rangers played so well he sat out last night as well.
Today’s D pairs
Lindgren – Fox
Miller – Trouba
Johnson – DeAngeloSmith and Hajek are also practicing and rotating in. #NYR
— Vince Z. Mercogliano (@vzmercogliano) January 20, 2021
It looks like Brendan Smith is the odd man out, which was predictable with Tony DeAngelo back. It is worth noting that Jacques Martin plays a big role in the defense pairs, so this one isn’t solely on Quinn. That said, Johnson is by far the worst defenseman on the team, so let’s see how long this lasts.
As for the forwards, the big change was Pavel Buchnevich was moved to the Artemi Panarin line.
Lines without Mika and Lemieux look like…
Panarin – Strome – Buch
Kreider – Chytil – Laf
PDG – Howden – Kakko
Blackwell – Rooney – Gauthier#NYR— Vince Z. Mercogliano (@vzmercogliano) January 20, 2021
My guess is that Mika Zibanejad gets the Kreider/Lafreniere line. That moves Chytil back to his original line with PDG and Kakko. Lemieux and Howden go back to the fourth line with Gauthier. So the only change is swapping Laf and Buchnevich.
Related
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/mco/BYGJSISIXVGK7CL5IRNL6DRREQ.jpg)
